Re: Shady Austronesian Linguistics (longish)

Roger Mills wrote:

"Minor questions:  Were Roman galleys sufficiently sea-worthy to make it so
far? Arab ships of this period probably were; perhaps an adventurous/wealthy
owner took an Arab ship from a Red Sea port?"

to which Dan Jones replied:
"No, not really. They were not clinker-built and they didn't have the
strength in the hull to survive tides and rough seas."

    It's true that Roman ships were not up to par, but Carthaginian ships
might have been - remember that our Roman crew was lost off the coast of
Carthage.  The "Periplus" or voyage of Hanno the Navigator (which can be
read today, in Greek, translated from a lost Punic original) details the
voyage of a group of Carthaginians who set sail around Africa, from the
Pillars of Heracles (a large portion of the story has been lost so the
narrative ends somewhere around Cameroon, but it has been vindicated by the
detailed description that it gives; incidentally, it was this story that
gave the western world its word "gorilla," although there is still some
debate as to what the word means in the context of the Periplus...).
Herodotus describes other Phoenicians who were hired by the Pharoah Necho to
travel from the Red Sea around Africa and return to Egypt.
    Would the ships of that era survived a more substantial voyage?  I'm
fairly certain that they would.  The voyage would have taken years (the
first Periplus took three years, as every year the Phoenicians would stop
and spend a few months growing food and stocking the ship), and it would
probably never venture very far from the sight of land unless they became
lost (a very real possibility - remember that the Waponi have a reputation
for having no sense of direction).
    Until recently, it was maintained that sailors in antiquity NEVER sailed
so far as to lose sight of land, hugging the coasts as they traveled the
trade routes.  This view still has its adherents (including George Bass at
Texas A & M, who revolutionized marine archaeology).  However, it is fairly
obvious that many of the Mediterranean trade routes passed over the deep sea
and that the Phoenicians had no particular issues about traveling beyond the
sight of land.  Just this past year, a team led by Bob Ballard (Wood's Hole
Oceanographic Research Institute, the guy who found the Titanic) and my
boss, Larry Stager, discovered three ships in the deep sea, along the
Carthage - Tyre trade route.   These ships knew where they were going (when
they had sunk, they were still aligned along the trade route heading in the
direction of Tyre).
    Another important trade route in Antiquity was the Egypt - Cyprus route,
formely thought to lie along the coasts of Palestine and Lebanon, then
jumping to Kition in Cyprus - but several ships that were sunk along the
coast of Cyprus are loaded with Egyptian wares (solely) and Egyptian ballast
(that is to say, rocks from Egypt) - it is highly unlikely that the cargo
and ballast would have been so homogenous, if the crews of these ships had
stuck to the shore - those Phoenicians loved to make a deal.
    Now, as for trips to Brazil and Tahiti... I am not willing to make an
ass out of myself and suggest that the Phoenicians routinely made forays out
into uncharted waters.  A trip between Egypt and Cyprus is one thing -
setting sail for the New World is quite another.  However, it is not
impossible that they could have survived the trip.
-Chollie
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